For non-public-domain ebooks, for sale between $2.99 and $9.99 inclusive, that are at least 20% cheaper than the cheapest new paper version, Amazon are now offering a 70% of (price less delivery charge) option for US sales.

But it's not automatic! You have to go to you bookshelf at http://dtp.amazon.com/ and manually edit the book details to specify that it's not public domain, change it to the 70% option, and agree to the new terms.

So - if you have books for sale in the Amazon Kindle store for between $2.99 and $9.99 and that meet the other criteria, get over there now and change! You'll be almost doubling your income from sales without costing your customers a penny more!

I have just gone through my kindle store books and updated the percentages. The delivery charge is $0.15 per megabyte. Most of my ebooks are well under a megabyte, and that $0.15 isn't a minimum. For example, my book about Alfredo Catalani is 430KB and has an RRP of $2.99.

I used to get 0.35*2.99 = $1.04 per sale. I now get 0.70*(2.99-0.42*0.15) = $2.04 per sale, which is just over 68% of the RRP.

And how does it compare with other places like Smashwords - or do you sell on Amazon only?

Through Lightning Source I get 75%
Through Smashwords I get 85% for Smashwords sales, 70.5% through a Smashwords affiliate, and 85% of Smashword's income through sales through other retailers.
Through Lulu.com I get a variable amount, (RRP-$1.49)*.8, which for most books is worse than Amazon.

The best revenue is through Lightning Source, who distribute to a variety of stores, including Books on Board.

Although Smashwords is best for direct sales, I really hate their sausage machine approach to conversions.

I suspect I ought to drop Lulu completely — they have very low sales, and take a lot in their fixed part of their fee.

If your book qualifies for the Amazon 70% rate, that's a good deal, since most ebook sales are probably through Amazon at the moment.

I will be getting my books onto the iBooks Store soon, which offers a straight 70%.

Folks, Amazon does NOT offer a 70% author royalty from full-service publishing. This 'new deal' simply represents a 30% sales commission from an online retail bookshop that had earlier tried to claim 70% for itself and been caught in the act. Neil

Folks, Amazon does NOT offer a 70% author royalty from full-service publishing. This 'new deal' simply represents a 30% sales commission from an online retail bookshop that had earlier tried to claim 70% for itself and been caught in the act. Neil

I didn't mean to give the impression that Amazon did offer such a service. I certainly agree that their previous offer of 35% (not 30%) was far too little.

I opted into the 70 percent royalty option at Amazon a few days ago. Sales have decreased somewhat, since my price went from 99 cents to $2.99. I think that eventually readers will view $2.99 as a rock bottom price at Amazon. At least I hope they will, as more authors opt for the 70 percent royalty. We'll see.

I've debated changing the prices on my books (I've been using $1.99) but I think right now I'm going to leave the price as it is — but my next new e-book will probably debut at $2.99-3.99 and I'll see how that goes.

I hate their new DTP pages for tracking royalties. It's made it a real chore to figure out what you're earning.

You've got that right on the DTP reports, Lee. What a pain not to give us a monthly, which is the only number that really matters.

About the 2.99 thing, I moved up a book to 2.99 from 0.99 on Amazon and took a 50% sales hit so far. That still means I'm making triple the money, but it is worrisome. I've dropped from the 1000s to the 4000s on my "Blood of Gold" title, entirely due to the price change as far as I can tell.

I'm very happy to receive the 70% royalty - and, as a big ebook purchaser, I think $2.99 is more than fair for a full-length novel. I'm comfortable paying up to $5.99 or $6.99 but read too much to buy ebooks at $12-$15. Even $9.99 is reserved for very special purchases.

I'm very happy to receive the 70% royalty - and, as a big ebook purchaser, I think $2.99 is more than fair for a full-length novel. I'm comfortable paying up to $5.99 or $6.99 but read too much to buy ebooks at $12-$15. Even $9.99 is reserved for very special purchases.

I agree, TC. $2.99 seems like a very reasonable price to me, too. My sales have taken somewhat of a dive since I increased the price. But I would never go back. I think people just have to get used to $2.99 as the new base price for a full length novel by a professional, living author.

For me, my sales have actually gone up since the royalty option changed (not that I think my sales are in any way related to the change) and I am now making twice as much as I did before, so I couldn't be happier. I consider myself very lucky and I don't expect this to last forever. But I am philosophical about it... whatever I make, no matter how high or low, is found money, considering that my Kindle titles are all out-of-print books that weren't earning my anything anymore.